[Victorm]

Hope everyone is doing well. Due to the ongoing Coronavirus lockdown, I seem to have some extra time these days especially with nothing much to do on weekends. With CPA out of the way last year, I was thinking about learning something new during this time and wanted to do something non accounting or tax. I don’t have any computer science background but in today’s times, having some knowledge about anything to do with computing/programming will be helpful I think.

So can anyone recommend what would be most beneficial to learn for CPAs/Accountants to utilize this time to learn something new and useful? I have worked in audit and corporate accounting roles earlier but now looking to start my own accounting business later this year (in case this is helpful in relation to the question).

Thanks in advance!

[CPAHOPE]

I actually studied SQL, a database programming language prior to studying for my exams. I don't think its thats necessary for CPAs but you might want to learn for fun. Since you want to build your own business, you might want to learn how to build a webpage. Study HTML and C++ I think its a good place to start

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[vbmer]

The trinity of programming languages in finance are VBA, SQL, and Python. We don't hire CPAs unless they know all of them. VBA is a terrible language, but because Excel and Access are so ubiquitous, at least a cursory knowledge of VBA is necessary to build financial models and conduct little tasks here and there. SQL is necessary because data is everything. Python is your Swiss Army knife for everything else – analytics, automation, machine learning, etc. Use cases include things like cash flow analytics, working capital optimization, audit analytics, document automation, etc.

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Manager, Big 4 Corporate Finance, CPA (WA)

[CPAHOPE]

Great advice Vbmer! Man, I remember studying VBA as well and it was pretty boring. I should study Python and VBA once I hopefully pass my exams

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[jeff]

I have a friend with a programming business … he says Python.

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Jeff Elliott, CPA (KS)
NINJA CPA | NINJA CMA | NINJA CPE | Another71

[monikernc]

Python and tableau and learn R

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[Victorm]

Thanks a lot to everyone for their suggestions.

[ZM]

First post here. I'll give a bit of my background: Currently in school at Lambda School studying data science and machine learning. Graduated with an accounting degree and want to get into the accounting field.

In my opinion web design programming languages aren't that important. Businesses want to get their names out there so you don't have to learn CSS and HTML. I can show you a site I've been working on that uses minimal code. Fastlane Forum has good information on building websites for businesses.

But yes like others have said here Python and SQL are pretty good if combining for accounting.

[Author]

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